Paolo Barbaro

Paolo Barbaro is Mattia’s husband, a Calabrian merchant, and one of the Florios’ earliest commercial partners. He helps shelter the young Ignazio, then joins him in the move toward Palermo and the spice trade. Yet the same household and partnership that give the Florios a foothold also expose the costs of Paolo’s authority: he silences Mattia, resents the closeness between her and her brothers, and eventually treats commercial disagreement as betrayal. His story links the family’s first migration and business ascent to a lasting rupture in kinship and trust.

Identity and Family

Paolo is Ignazio’s brother-in-law through his marriage to Mattia. He is short and stocky, in contrast to Ignazio’s lean, youthful build, and is established as a man with a household and children of his own. When Ignazio returns to the family, Paolo appears leading a donkey; he is preparing to go to the harbor and check on the boat. His practical role in the household and trade is present from the beginning, but so is his authority over Mattia: when she tries to offer Ignazio clothes, Paolo cuts her off, asks who invited her opinion, and orders her to hurry. Ignazio defends his sister, distressed by her humiliation, while Paolo dismisses her as a wife who talks too much.

Paolo’s household initially gives Ignazio a refuge from the resentment of his stepmother and the indifference of his father. Ignazio later recognizes that, as an adolescent, his brother had taken him to Mattia and Paolo’s home to protect him. He understands this act as having saved his life. Paolo’s significance to Ignazio is therefore not reducible to rivalry or estrangement: he once helped preserve the family bond on which Ignazio depended, even as his later choices helped damage it.

Leaving Bagnara for Palermo

After an earthquake, Paolo tells Ignazio that he has long considered leaving Bagnara and is now more certain. He does not want Vincenzo to grow up under the threat of a house collapsing on him, but his ambition also reaches beyond immediate safety: the village and its limited life no longer satisfy him, and he wants to go to Palermo. The destination is commercially plausible. The Barbaro and Florio families are already known in Bagnara for their spice shop there, and Palermo offers a wider market.

The move has a different meaning for each member of the family. Ignazio, who has relied on Paolo and Mattia, fears being left alone. Giuseppina hopes that Paolo and Mattia will follow the Florios to Palermo, but that hope is not fulfilled. Paolo decides to remain based in Bagnara, traveling back and forth to Palermo to trade with the north and maintain another safe harbor. He also says he needs a woman to look after his house and children. Giuseppina suspects that the stated practical reasons conceal another motive: Paolo wants to keep Mattia away from her brothers, particularly from the closeness between Mattia and Ignazio. Their separation thus begins not as a simple break with commerce, but as a household arrangement that divides sisters-in-law and constrains Mattia’s family ties.

Merchant and Business Partner

The Florio-Barbaro business develops within a changing trade. Spices pass through many hands and long routes before reaching European markets; by the early nineteenth century, British and French merchants ship goods from overseas colonies, and the wider supply lowers prices and diversifies what is available. Palermo’s spice sellers organize as an aromatari guild, while more merchants enter a trade once restricted to the wealthy. Paolo’s commercial world is therefore shaped both by older routes and by new competition.

The partnership’s dealings reveal how closely business depends on trust. When Paolo hears that Ignazio and the Florios have rented a warehouse without consulting him and signed the arrangement under their own names, he confronts them. He invokes the bread he shared with them when they were starving and accuses them of repaying his generosity by acting behind his back. Ignazio tries to explain that a worker employed by Canzoneri has reported the rental and that Paolo believes it is an attempt to cheat him. The dispute turns a business decision into a test of loyalty, with old dependence invoked as a claim on present conduct.

The rented warehouse reflects the scale and sophistication the Florios are reaching. Located within the Palazzo Steri property behind the customs offices, it provides cool, guarded rooms for spices in transit or awaiting sale. Import tariffs are paid when the goods enter Palermo, rather than while they remain in storage, making the arrangement a common way for wholesalers to reduce tax costs. The stock includes Indian spices obtained through British suppliers and goods from French colonies bought through Italian sailors and Livorno; the Florios have built a broad Mediterranean trade, though they are not yet as wealthy as the Canzoneris. The warehouse is a practical expansion, but Paolo sees the unconsulted lease as a threat to the partnership’s shared authority.

Rupture and Aftermath

Distrust deepens through further quarrels, including an argument at customs and a later dispute over ivory and cinnamon. Paolo goes to La Cala after hearing that his brother-in-law has arrived but has not gone to the store as usual. There he finds Ignazio speaking with the shopkeeper Curatolo, who has bought the consignment at what Paolo considers a ridiculously low price. Paolo watches the goods leave and challenges Barbaro over selling their ivory to a competitor. Barbaro rejects the premise that the stock belongs to them jointly, asking whether there is any such thing as “ours.” The disagreement exposes a fundamental difference: Paolo speaks as though the goods and enterprise are shared, while Barbaro refuses the common ownership Paolo assumes.

The argument lasts a long time and becomes heated and at times violent. Paolo eventually leaves the store, slamming the door, tired of repeatedly hearing that he has tried to cheat his partner. Ignazio remains to explain, patiently and calmly. Paolo does not spend the night at the Florios’ as he usually does when in Palermo. At the door, he asks Giuseppina to tell her husband to be reasonable and warns that the venture will fail if he has to deal with a man he believes cheats him. Giuseppina says nothing, observing the silence expected of a housewife, but she believes both Paolo and Ignazio are honest; in her judgment, Paolo is more devoted to work than to his family, while Ignazio is incapable of cheating anyone.

By February 1803, the Paolo Barbaro and Paolo Florio company has been dissolved for nearly a month. The final break follows the ivory-and-cinnamon sale, but it belongs to a longer sequence of disputes and eroding confidence. The collapse separates commercial partnership from family connection without resolving either: Paolo’s accusations remain, while Ignazio’s attempts to explain have not restored trust.

Mattia and the Family’s Later Distance

Paolo’s illness eventually leaves him unable to work. He finds an inexpensive house for his family in Marsala, where Mattia and the children move. Ignazio sometimes sends money to help pay for Raffaele’s studies or cover the family’s needs, though he admits that the payments may also ease his own conscience. The aid reveals that the brothers-in-law’s rupture has not erased Ignazio’s responsibility toward Mattia and her children.

Paolo’s wish to keep Mattia’s ties with her brothers at a distance does not fully succeed. Giuseppina, despite Paolo’s order that she end contact with Mattia, asks Ignazio to write to her, at first timidly and then regularly; Ignazio agrees. When Mattia later comes with Giuseppina hoping to see Paolo, Ignazio reports that Paolo refuses to receive her. Even illness does not soften his refusal. Mattia is devastated and asks whether she deserves no forgiveness; Ignazio explains that Paolo began shouting and that he had to give him laudanum to calm him. Paolo’s refusal turns an old conflict over family proximity into an explicit denial of reconciliation, leaving Mattia dependent on the connection she has maintained through Giuseppina and Ignazio.

Paolo’s arc is marked by an unresolved contrast: he once offered Ignazio a place of safety, but his insistence on authority and suspicion of betrayal later narrowed the family circle he had helped shelter. In business, the shared enterprise gives way to a dispute over who may decide what belongs to whom. At home, Mattia’s loyalty and relationships are subjected to his control, even as she continues to seek contact with her brothers. His departure from the partnership and his later refusal to see Mattia make him a consequential figure in the Florios’ early rise—not simply as their first partner, but as the source of a fracture that persists after the business itself is gone.